T H E F I LT H GODDESS FICTION
D e v in Thomas O’ S h e a
Trigger Warning: Trichotillomania, Suicide I lost teeth as a kid, the filth goddess let herself in through W hen the front door at midnight. She’d borrow my dad’s tools to get
under the sink, wrench open the tap, and shotgun the sludge that had accumulated in the pipes down there. Half racoon, half woman, what caught in the drains of the showers was a delicacy to her. I snuck out of bed to watch from the hallway, noticing that crumbs and cobwebs from under the sink became magnetized to her clothes and fur. She came dangerously close to me, opened the door to the basement, and shuffled down the old wooden stairs to clean the lint traps of the dryer. Just another day on the job for her, but I peeked from the top of the steps, looking down at the trapezoids of light cast by the laundry room’s single bulb. You could hear the dryer door slam closed all over the house, and I retreated back down the hallway to my room. I locked myself inside with the light off as her stomping up the stairs got louder. My parents slept upstairs and didn’t hear a thing. The filth goddess barged in and flicked the Thomas the Tank Engine lightswitch I’d grown too old for. She was eating an old scouring sponge. “That’s the sponge we keep below the sink,” I pointed out. “We’re still using that.” I sat cross-legged and pulled the blankets around me like a monk—protection against her flies. “Someone decided it was garbage,” she said. As she spoke, larvae birthed to quick-winged black things at the back of her throat with every word. She belched them out into my room, and they began to swarm, blotting out the light. Dust and dander rose from the carpet—slow at 33
